Microsoft has certainly made its share of strange moves over the years when it comes to software licensing. However, the company has again raised the ire of its customers with a change in retail licensing agreement for Office 2013. Microsoft confirmed this week that Office 2013 will be permanently tied to the first computer on which it is installed.

Not only does that mean you will be unable to uninstall the software on your computer and reinstall on a new computer, it also means if you computer crashes and is unrecoverable you'll be buying a new license for Windows 2013.

This move is a change from past licensing agreements with older versions of Office, and many believe that this move is a way for Microsoft to push consumers to its subscription Office plans.

"That's a substantial shift in Microsoft licensing," said Daryl Ullman, co-founder and managing director of the Emerset Consulting Group, which specializes in helping companies negotiate software licensing deals. "Let's be frank. This is not in the consumer's best interest. They're paying more than before, because they're not getting the same benefits as before."

Prior to Office 2013, Microsoft's end-user license agreement for retail copies of Office allowed the owner to reassign the license to a different device any number of times as long as that reassignment didn't happen more than once every 90 days. The Office 2013 EULA changes past verbiage stating, "Our software license is permanently assigned to the licensed computer."

When Computer World asked Microsoft if customers can move Word and its license to replacement PC if the original PC was lost, stolen, or destroyed Microsoft only replied "no comment."

quote: On the other hand though, would LibreOffice (and others like it) actually compare to Office Suite, enough so to take customers away?

The inescapable fact of the matter is that 99.99% of all computer users in the world do nothing with their word processors, spreadsheets, etc. beyond what WordPerfect and Quattro Pro did back in 1990.

Any and all office suites do vastly more than essentially everyone needs to be able to do. But MS Office has a stranglehold on the corporate world, and that bleeds through to the home user - since that's what they use at work, they think they "need" to use it at home.

It can be mind-boggling how people will insist that they "can't figure out" how to use some other software package...even things as simple as web browsers. I'll tell people to avoid using IE because of all the malware that targets it - use Opera, Firefox, Chrome...don't care, so long as it's not IE.

But then they'll stare at Opera/Firefox/Chrome like they have no idea how to use it - even when you demonstrate easily that they all work exactly the same way. And then they'll go back to IE and get their computer infected because they're stupid users who think it's a good idea to download everything that shows up in a pop-up window.

You're right, but there are millions of people who "can't figure it out" because I think they've just lost the ability to learn. It's pathetic. On the other hand, MS has created a very refined product over time that is easy to use and intuitive. The change alone is a barrier because people don't like change. Between the different Guis, menu names, and look & feel stuff, many people won't switch.

And then there are the legitimate needs like MS Access, flowcharting, etc I did a bunch of searching for a replacement for Access and nothing came close. The time spent trying to make another do what Access can do is a waste. I would rather spend a few hundred dollars on a product that will do what I want in a timely fashion than to spend hours or days trying to come up with a cheap or free workaround. I've done it, and my time is valuable.